Safety with dangerous pts

Nurses General Nursing

Published

Hi all!

I come from a critical access icu and er. We live in a big college town and get a fair amount of dangerously combative pts and psych pts. Our icu is the only observation unit so all the psych holds are admitted there. We generally only have two small female nurses and a female aide. They admit pts that require 8 people to take them down and send them to us. I'm working on a safety initiative and trying to find out what works for other hospitals in regards to safety with these pts. Do you staff a police officer at bedside? I know a lot are brought in by the police here. I would like to hear the way you deal with these dangerous situations.

If they are combative and dangerous it is impossible to give. We have to wait for police to come which take a while which in that time someone could get hurt

If they are combative and dangerous the police (Im a former officer) should be helping to restrain them until they can be safely physically or pharmacologically restrained by medical staff.

If they are going to ED prior to coming up to ICU for observation than the ED staff shouldnt be handing off what is a dangerous unrestrained pt. I mean how or why do they think this is acceptable and why is your unit accepting it?

Not trying to be snarky but none of this makes sense.

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